Behind the Beautiful Forevers读后感10篇(4)

　　另外，印度民主所表现出的问题还跟贫困社会的生存方式─亦即上述之第二点─有很大关系。贫困社区在物质生活及人际关系上反倒可能是各阶层中最理性化的，因为他们必须理性地算计一点一滴，否则一不小心就没饭吃。这种理性化彻底到人际关系中已经没有道德约束或精神追求存在的空间。当两个拾荒者面对着一个可乐罐，谁捡不到谁今天可能就吃不饱，这时候是不大可能有温良恭俭让的，有的只会是丛林法则，弱肉强食。所以，印度贫民窟里的社会关系跟今天中国农村的amoral familism还不大一样，前者是因为利益斗争而摧毁了道德，后者是因为缺乏经济分工、社会整合，而使道德衰落。

　　在这种极端贫困的情况下，行为者是没有远见、没有计划的─这就是经济学上说的穷人显著的future discounting：远见和计划都没用，谁都保不准你能活到那一天。在这种行为逻辑下的选举政治，必然被clientelism和小恩小惠所主导：谁能带来实惠，哪怕是蝇头小利，就投谁的票；地头蛇让我投谁我就投谁，因为得罪了地头蛇，吃不了兜着走，而得了地头蛇的宠，小恩小惠才能分着些。在这种理性的利益算计高过任何政治理念的情况下，政党之争不可能是政治纲领和治理能力的竞争。所以，我党的说教还是有一定道理：经济落后的情况下搞政治民主，适得其反。缅甸很快就要出大问题。

　　民主有很多可能的发展路径，如果开始得早了（比如在经济贫困的情况下），它将走上一条腐败与低能的道路，而日后想脱离此路要比从集权制度转型还难，因为变革的政治动力已经没有了、民众的斗争工具也没有了，有的只是一张无用的选票。当然，在印度这样的贫困社区中，真正有选票的也未必是多数。

　　oo在后记中总结到：the most underacknowledged effect of corruption ... is a contraction of our moral universe. 这个道德空间的缩减，的确是贫困社区中的大问题，但腐败是不是其根源却难说。我以为，说到底，根源还是贫困。贫困滋生腐败：只有腐败才能获得一点点逃离贫困的机会，如一直努力想做slumlord的Asha的作为。而在印度，腐败又借选举制度而繁衍，使下层民众无法脱离贫困。这时能起作用的只有是外来的力量，比如说有行政能力、有改革方略的政府，只不过在印度的选举制度下产生不出这样的政府和政治领袖。

　　总的来说，虽然不是最好读，但这仍是本极难得的好书。何时中国才能有新闻记者下这样的苦功夫，揭示一下社会底层的面貌。以前看过本赵铁林写的讲海南开放初期形形色色人物的纪实，他的材料也还不错，但思考和写作的水平跟Boo差得岂止十万八千里。这一点上不得不佩服美国好大学里的教育。当然，她能做到这些，也是因为社会富裕了，有《纽约客》和MacArthur基金会给出钱养她。

　　《Behind the Beautiful Forevers》读后感(七)：集体行动与NGO都到哪里去了？

　　转自 http://kafila.org/2012/04/08/review-behind-the-beautiful-forevers-by-katherine-boo/

　　y MITU SENGUPTA

　　In a remarkable book about slumdwellers in Mumbai, Katherine Boo brings to light an India of “profound and juxtaposed inequality” – a country where more than a decade of steady economic growth has delivered shamefully little to the poorest and most vulnerable. But though indeed a thoroughgoing and perceptive indictment of post-liberalization India, the book fits into a troubling narrative about the roots of India’s poverty and squandered economic potential.

　　This is a beautifully written book. Through tight but supple prose, Boo offers an unsettling account of life in Annawadi, a slum near Mumbai’s international airport. In Boo’s words, this “single, unexceptional slum” sits beside a “sewage lake” so polluted that pigs and dogs resting in its shallows have “bellies stained in blue.” It is hidden by a wall that sports an advertisement for elegant floor tiles (“Beautiful Forevers” – and hence the title). There are heartrending accounts of rat-filled garbage sheds, impoverished migrants forced to eat rats, a girl covered by worm-filled boils (from rat bites), and a “vibrant teenager,” who kills herself (by drinking rat poison) when she can no longer bear what life has to offer.

　　Though the book reads like fiction, it is not. As Boo explains, in the author’s note towards the end, everything is real, down to all the names. Boo’s inimitable novelesque work of non-fiction is the product of years of methodical observation and research, a journey that began ten years ago, when she “fell in love with an Indian man and gained a country” (the man in question is Sunil Khilnani, a well-known academic and author of The Idea of India). Boo has chronicled the lives of Annawadians, with photographs, video recordings, audiotapes, written notes and interviews, with several of the children pitching in, upon “mastering [Boo’s] Flip Video Camera.”

　　This intimate view of life in Annawadi is embedded within a larger concern, about the government’s role in “the distribution of opportunity in a fast-changing country.” In these uncertain times – an “ad hoc, temp-job, fiercely competitive age” – has the government made things better or worse？ In a bid to answer this question, Boo has consulted more than three thousand public records, obtained through the Right to Information Act, from government agencies such as the Mumbai police, the state public health department, public hospitals, the state and central education bureaucracies, electoral offices, city ward offices, morgues, and the courts.

　　The verdict, chilling in its details, is that there is a deep rot at the heart of the Indian state. The utter callousness of government officials is matched only by the utter vulnerability of the poor, who must daily navigate “the great web of corruption.” Police officers batter a child, aiming for his hands, the body part on which his tenuous livelihood depends. Doctors, at a government hospital, alter a burned woman’s records to absolve themselves of blame for her gruesome death. A school, meant for the poor, is closed as “soon as the leader of the nonprofit has taken enough photos of children studying to secure the government funds” (in contrast, a school funded by a Catholic charity, “takes it obligation to poor students more seriously”). …… 此处隐藏：2763字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……